Daily Overview for June 18, 2005
Your curiosity will reach cat-like levels today. Indulge that inquisitiveness.
You’re listening hard, but their point of view still seems pretty darn wacky to you. Your courteous attention goes a long way toward lessening the blow when you tell them so.
Playing hide-and-go-seek when you were a kid was lots of fun, but right now it might just confuse things more than you’d like. If there’s something on your mind, spit it out. Yes, speaking your piece can be tough and a little scary, but honest communication can’t happen between you and a certain party until one of you starts talking. Expecting someone to read your mind just isn’t fair, so speak up before it’s too late.
Waking up late on the couch, I lay and stare at the unfamiliar surroundings of Checkered’s front room and wonder why my head and stomach are complaining. I need food. Rummaging around in the kitchen for anything resembling sustenance I am greeted by the strangest array of food labeled in scattered japanese characters and little to no recognizable english. Parodies of crackers and snacks abound; dried seafood, plants and animals. The only recognizable foodstuff in the entire home is the alcohol. I actually spend a moment considering it before simply drinking some water to dull the sensations. Pacing the house, then emerging from its confines and walking the surrounding area I can’t wait too see what today is going to hold.
Hours of empty conversation and confined space later I am finally on my way to see Amy; apprehension isn’t quite the right word. Traffic is playing hell with me and I seem to have taken the longest route through the city to get where I need to be. Hooray for traffic. Getting off the freeway, I start heading up La Cienega Blvd to where the hotel is supposed to be located; 2 miles from the I-10. 8 miles later, I call the hotel to make sure I am in the right state. Oddly enough, when I finally arrive parking is no problem. I’m in the middle of Beverly Hills on two intersecting major roads, and I have a parking space in less than 30 seconds. Walking through the human and vehicular traffic, I take notice of my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. Pausing for a moment, I shake them out; playing the role of the overactive child. I make it to the hotel lobby and am calling Amy as I crest the steps, looking sidelong into the lobby area. I have no contacts in, no glasses, I haven’t seen the girl in far too long and she cut off 2 feet of hair since last we met, but there is no mistaking her, even from 50 feet away.
There are nervous ticks, unconscious physical reactions that take over a person’s body in moments of intensity. Fists clench into rocks, unconsciously. A person may begin crying and laughing hysterically at the same time. My favorite… is the smile. When all the pent up energy in a person boils over; all the heat, anticipation, happiness, frustration comes to a head at the edge of redemption there is a smile that splits a face in twain. Unstoppable and uncontrollable it beams to the world the rush of emotion and contentment that is unleashed on a person at those moments of clear pristine joy. This is my face as I move to embrace Amy.
Amy’s face is the most divine mixture of two feelings. The first is known to anyone returning after a long separation from home or loved ones. Relief and joy combine to form a warm hum throughout ones entire being accompanied by the sudden release of unrealized tension tensed muscles. Take an international flight filled with turbulence, bad food and worse passengers a crowded airport, a scary taxi, and you’ll get it when you catch that first glimpse of your front door.
The second is harder to describe. Powerful and painful, not everyone gets it. It’s about missing someone while they are still in full view. It’s about not believing what you see; being afraid that, should you take your eyes off them, even blink, they will disappear. When you near the closing cusp of a dream that embodied everything that you knew you were entitled to in your life, but had never been realized; when the colors around the edge start to blur. It’s that thought that this thing, this somnolent world, whatever it may be, will disappear and be lost forever unless through sheer force of will you can make it stay. It smacks of desperation, but flavored with hope.
If you ever doubt that you are loved: disappear. I did this to my mother when I was a child. I probably gave her numerous heart attacks that she never admitted to. But disappear, for a day, a week, a month, and watch the face of your target when you walk into their office or appear at their front door without warning. It is my firm belief that if all mankind had the experience of seeing that look on another’s face there would be no room in this world for Bin-laden and his ilk. It is earthshaking.
Trying not to run through the lobby, I wrap my arms around her. The embrace makes the trip worth it already. We talk on the way up to her room, but as we step up to her door I realize that I don’t remember a single thing that has passed my lips since entering. I am nervous; distracted by the sight of her. I need to eat.
Third Floor, Room 345. We walk into one of the nicest hotel rooms I have ever seen. The door to the bathroom is shoji, Japanese rice paper, rimmed and latticed with black wood. The expansive window encompassing half the wall adjacent to the entrance is one half shoji and light wood, one half mural or cranes, castles, and others incarnations of imagination, like something you would see adorning the wall of a Daimyo or Shogun’s receiving room. The bed, which occupies most of the decently spacious room, looks so comfortable I want to get in it and not get out. Like a snow drift, it is too white to be a hotel comforter, but there it is.
Amy and her mom, Sona, have taken all the non-essentials out of their mini-fridge and filled it with beer, setting the pace for the weekend. Sona and I have time to sit back and get to know one another while Amy gets herself ready for the evening. The entirety of my interaction with Amy’s mother prior to this day consists of a letter written on hotel stationery slipped into an envelope with a Delta flight voucher some years ago. Sona laughs at my ingrained “ma’am” suffixed to my responses to her queries. When I mention my surprise at the ease of parking nearby, she says, “I hope you don’t get a parking ticket.” Apparently she is under the impression such things are a problem here. I assure her that such is not the case. Amy emerges from the shower in just her towel, draping her frame like the folded wings of a Seraph, to which her mother says something I don’t hear. I am too busy staring. Clothing retrieved, Angel again sequestered safely out of sight in the opulent bathroom, Sona and I are free to resume our meandering conversation. We speak openly about most things, censoring myself only slightly; conversation made easy by the Bud Light supply that seems to have been flowing for some time.
Amy finally leaves the bathroom ready to go. She and I are going to meet up with a friend Ray and get some sushi, drink some sake and relax for a couple hours before I need to drive back up to Barstow for the Relay for Life I am obligated to run in at midnight. The drive from Beverly Hills to Pasadena was a nightmare. I am documented poor at remembering my way around LA freeways, so I printed out the directions from her hotel to the restaurant I had imagined that we were to meet Ray at. How many “Pasadena Sushi” can there be in Pasadena? So after driving down at least 3 freeways and who knows how many side streets and second guesses we make it into the parking garage and over to Pasadena Sushi (the other one). Ray is even more invasive and obnoxious than usual; he must have been drinking for a while. Our conversation is punctuated by the staccato of knives from the sushi chefs on the other side of the frosted glass screen before us as the three of us drink and laugh. I eventually force one piece of sushi down Amy only to be followed rapidly by more sake and beer. Somewhere in the middle of all the conversation, food, and alcohol Amy turns her face ever so slightly towards me and gives me that crooked half smile she does sometimes. I’d forgotten the effect she can have on me. I realize I wouldn’t leave this woman’s side tonight for the world. So much for the cancer patients.
Meandering back to the parking garage, warm from the sake and the beautiful California weather, I leave Amy to contend with the uncooperative parking ticket meter and grab Ray’s spare keys from him on his way back up the stairs. He gives me a look I can’t read and hands them over, telling me his daughter is out of town and he won’t be back till the following day, so it’s all ours.
Amy mentions that she has to find a bathroom, as the alcohol is pouring through her. No Problem, says I; taking the opportunity to hit every bump and pothole the 3 miles back to Ray’s house, pointing out what a great job I am doing of being a considerate driver. With no idea where we are going, Amy continually asks me about our destination. I just tell her we are going to find a bathroom. Reaching Ray’s house with bladder intact is a serious accomplishment for her. Remember kids, listen to your parents and always go before you leave.
Ray is not an amazingly clean person. He has a nice place and I have seen it be near-immaculate at times. Today, however, is most definitely not one of those times. The place looks like a frat house; dishes, and bottles everywhere. Clothing scattered like a washer detonated mid spin cycle, it’s no surprise when Amy states, “Not what I pictured your place looking like.” Without further ado we go exploring, raiding the booze and wandering through bedrooms like a South Carolina open house. We play around on Ray’s computer, with his camcorder, and music for a while. Ray’s atrocious British neighbor rousing herself from her opium-induced haze long enough to come and tell us she is calling the police over the noise. This is the same woman that yelled at us for talking too loud on the walkway at 7 p.m. one day. In a word: Bitch.
Eventually all these distractions are just that; distractions. We are lying down on the bed with a movie playing in the background just absorbing one another, chatting back and forth. It’s too much. I have to touch her. Tracing my fingers idly across her body like a lazy surfer waiting for a wave on a placid Pacific day, I am reminded of how utterly amazing every inch of her is. Silk skin stretched over curves Michelangelo couldn’t mimic. Full breasts that just stand up and say “HEEEEEEY!” That wave breaks with all the force and determination of Triton. Mouth, nose, and hands all full of her at last, I am drowning and ecstatic about it. It is frantic and slow, confusing and clear, painful and pleasing and far too many other words that fail to encompass the evening.
Hours pass. Body spent; crouching over her prone form, alive with the release of 4 years disappointment, abandonment, and pain, standing tall here on my knees; I have to tell her.
